Naireeta’s Bhungroo is an innovative water management solution for farmers facing both drought and flooding situations.

It saves farmers’ standing crop in flash floods while ensuring him/her water for cropping in the dry season and thus guaranteeing food security. Farmers with small land holdings are often deprived of adequate and timely irrigation in lean season whereas in monsoon they lose their staple food crops either due to excessive rains or delayed rains. In India alone, more than 6.72 million ha of land is affected by salinity and seasonal water logging and nearly 5 million small and marginal farmers have to bear its consequence.

Bhungroo filters, injects and stores excess farm water or storm water underground for usage in lean periods. It ensures adequate water for irrigation and other purposes with zero water footprint i.e. in terms of storage and usage of stored rainwater. Using a surface space of only one square meter, each Bhungroo can augment/conserve nearly one to four million litres of water each year within its subsurface zone. 17 technical designs of Bhungroo are now available for serving diverse communities within various agroclimatic zones.

Currently Naireeta Services has successfully erected 241 Bhungroos across 6 states in India, and assisted 2000+ farmers in the process. With its partnering agencies, Naireeta Services is enabling women climate leaders to replicate Bhungroo technology within Gujarat which has produced more than 2000 units so far and benefitted community of more than 60000 farming households in Gujarat alone.

The whole system dwells upon locally available resources, skills, and most importantly, locally manageable maintenance processes. Besides meeting a critical need of the farmers the process also creates strong synergy opportunities in drinking water, sanitation and crop value addition segment. Bhungroo’s unique innovation won the prestigious Climate Change Mitigation Award from UNFCCC in 2014 for its gender-centric positive impact on soil health, drought control as well as desertification curtailing. Bhungroo also got awarded/supported by World Bank IDM, Department of Science & Technology (Govt. of India), India Innovation Growth Program, Lockheed Martin Innovation Award, Asian Development Bank JFPR, Millennium Alliance Global, World Water Forum, UKAID, Government of UP, Government of Gujarat, Government of Bihar, FICCI, Deshpande Foundation and private farmers. Naireeta also has Africa partnerships with global donors.